The Courier and Other Tall Tales: More David Thomas Stone stories

By Tom Badgett

Mystery. Humor. Happy stories. Sad stories. The unusual. This little book of short stories covers it all. And overall, you meet a range of interesting, real-life people. You will identify with the residents of a small town, probably not unlike your own. You will laugh as you follow an elderly couple on an overnight getaway trip. You will empathize with a young girl who becomes a woman under some of the harshest circumstances you could imagine. You will follow another young mother who does what mothers do, anything to protect the safety of her daughter. You will think back on your own relationship with your father as you read a young man's memories of many fishing trips. There's a mystery in Boston and in a small southern lakeside town. If you never played outside as a child, you will learn how a kid's life used to be before cell phones and the Internet.

This book offers a collection of people, places, and stories that will pique your interest, touch your memories, entertain, and surprise you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662456718

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The Courier and Other Tall Tales

More David Thomas Stone stories

Tom Badgett

Copyright © 2022 Tom Badgett

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-6624-5670-1 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-7897-0 (hc)

ISBN 978-1-6624-5671-8 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

The Introduction

Lennie and Sarah

Apples

The Escape

Gone Fishing

The Rhymer

The Courier

Jessie

The Small Town

The Gang

The Bike Ride

Acknowledgements

I could not have completed this project without support from some special people.

Thanks to Carly Little ([e-mail]) for the help with the storyline and cover design; Larry Burchett (b-rodorcustom.com) for the song lyrics in the Jessie story; and my dear wife, June, for critiquing my stories and for her constant support of all my writing projects and other crazy endeavors. She is the love of my life.

The Introduction

This book is an experiment of sorts and, at the same time, I hope, the beginning of a new professional stage for me. You will be the judge of that, of course.

I was a professional writer for many years. In the early years, I wrote for radio and television news and documentary film. Later, it was technical magazine articles for PCjr, PC, Popular Electronics, Computer Shopper, Digital News, and others. Then I wrote computer hardware and software books for McGraw-Hill, O'Reilly, and John Wiley—some sixty titles.

Throughout my technical writing career, I also wrote short life observation pieces for myself. I called them snapshots. Sometimes, it was poetry, sometimes prose. Now, fifteen years retired, I decided to expand some of these and see if anybody else likes them.

This collection is fiction, but some of these observations have factual basis, of course, things I've seen, heard about, or experienced. Events inaccurately remembered or remembered and edited to fit the current story. Something I've heard and made a part of my memories. (If I've used someone else's memories, I apologize now. It's only because I'm old.) It would be difficult to divorce oneself completely from life's experiences in the creation of fiction, I believe.

To give you an idea of how I began to steer myself away from technical writing, here's an early observation from around 1986 on a Boston subway platform:

You could hear the clear, unusual quality in his voice before you topped the stair into the chamber that was the blue line train station. The young singer was surrounded by a small crowd, busy folk who chose to pause for his one-man show. Beyond the rapt audience, the rush to trains continued, an incongruous contrast.

The boy's once dressy trousers, tasseled loafers, fashionable jacket, even in their disarray, seemed somehow out of place here. His hair was well-groomed, his hands, small and delicate as they worked the old, electrified guitar, never stopping even between songs. As each song ended, he strummed the chords that would carry him through stairsteps of sound to the next melody.

The songs he sang were a mixture of old American pop, French folk, and Spanish rock. Each language he sang with an indefinable accent, so it was difficult to be sure of his native tongue.

When asked about this, he replied, I guess you could say I am from nowhere…or I am from everywhere. I've lived by the sea. I've known the thrill of mountain heights. I've had money. I've had none. Where would you like me to be from?

When an English song followed a French one, there was a hint of the French clinging to the Saxon sounds until he had sung several English numbers, then the speech was clearly English. In the same way, he made the transition to Spanish with an English accent that gradually gave way to a seemingly perfect Basque lilt.

And so it went, through his repertoire, keeping us off-balance, forcing us to listen through the noise of the trains, making us forget how late we were. He corralled strangers with his music into loosely cohesive groups, yet through it all, he kept to himself, never looking directly at anyone. Ignoring his aloof demeanor, we queued casually by the old broken guitar case with its plastic handle held loosely to the lid by a piece of soft wire to make our offering—dimes, quarters, pennies, a few dollars.

Thank you, he would say between measures as each participant took his part in the ceremony, but he never let you catch his eye. He smiled to himself as if the words he sang evoked a memory, not unpleasant, of other times and other places.

Another train came, and we broke through the bubble he had built around us, and we were gone.

Sometimes, the images I saw in passing evoked a poetic response, as this one, also from Boston, as I exited the Parker House hotel in 1988, on my way from breakfast to work:

Snapshot

(On Tremont Street, Boston)

It was a snapshot.

He was looking through the glass,

his face framed by wood and brass.

Only a moment in that brief pass

to see the sadness there.

I saw, too, his earnest look,

The birdlike moves,

The wrinkled neck,

The matted hair.

A dirty sport coat,

Round shoulders stooped,

and tennis shoes.

Street people!

They choose a uniform

above their state.

And here he was, looking

through the glass.

Doesn't he know I'm late?

He's fooling no one!

His sad-eyed hunger shows.

He's hiding from the rain and cold.

He has no business here.

And yet I pause.

For an instant, life's on hold.

Then I press on.

We look away and together

acknowledge the games we play.

And this, from the Charlotte airport in 1988:

Airport

Call me, she said.

Okay, says he,

As casual as you please.

He walked away, slowly,

without a backward glance.

Makes you wonder…

If he had the chance

and she, but for the place and time,

Would there be more

to finish out this rhyme?

I wonder, too, about

how one can care

and let so little show.

Just enough,

enough to let her know,

and she, with the angle of her head,

sends him on his way.

It is comfortable, sedate,

yet something's there.

As he turned to go,

he touched her hair.

Most of these snapshots or observations are short, like these. For this book, I've taken observations, added the occasional personal experience, turned on my imagination, and created ten short stories with a variety of topics. I hope you have as much fun reading these as I did writing them.

Lennie and Sarah

You ever notice how sometimes it is the little things you remember about something you just happen to be thinking about, something that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the thing you're trying to remember? For me, it is this pair of cheap-shit reading glasses that has to do with this one time I'm thinking about. I should'a threw 'em away a long time ago, but damn it, they worked, and they were comfortable.

What I remember is that the little screw that holds the thing that goes over your ear kept popping out of its hole. The screw didn't even work anymore, so you couldn't screw the damn thing back in. You just push it back so the ear thing didn't fall off. Should'a threw 'em away a long time ago. I didn't, and I had this habit of reaching up and pushing that dang screw in all the time. That's what I remember about this one time.

But anyway, this one time, me and the wife was traveling somewhere and stopped in this little town outside Nashville for the night. No, I don't remember the place exactly, just one of them little places you go. See, we're old farts. Nothing much else to do, so we just pick up and go somewhere sometimes.

You wanna go somewhere? I say.

Yeah, we could, says she.

Me: Where you wanna go?

She: I dunno. You decide.

So we put a few things in a suitcase—enough stuff to last a couple of days. We never stay gone much more than a couple of days. Like I said, we're old farts—and hit the road to somewhere. Sometimes, I decide where we're going, like she said, and sometimes, we just drive. Follow our noses, so to speak. What I'm remembering is one of them times.

So we were at this cheap little motel in a little no-name town outside Nashville, just sitting in the lobby, waiting on time to go to dinner. Oh, we're checked in and everything and our stuff is all laid out in our room. We're ready for bed and all, but you get tired of the damn cheap TVs in those places—and nothing on the TV worth watching anyway—so we'd sometimes just go sit in the lobby a while in the evening. You could talk to the clerk. Sometimes, they have some stale coffee you can get or some fruit. So we go in there sometimes and just sit. Or we'll read or something, you know.

Well, we're sitting there like that this one time, and in walks a couple of young kids, a boy and a girl. Well, I shouldn't say that. They were really a man and a woman, I guess, but to us, they were really young, so we called 'em kids. The funny thing was they came in like they was looking for a room, but instead of going on up to the desk where the clerk was just sitting waiting for someone to come in like that, this guy pulled the girl by the arm, and they walked straight up to where we was sitting.

I looked up from my paper, slow like, so I wouldn't make him think I really gave a shit about who he was or what he wanted and just looked at him. He was grinning this big, shit-eating grin, and his girl was still sort'a drooped against his side where he'd pulled her away from their course toward the clerk's desk.

I didn't say anything, but he immediately stuck out his hand like we was long-lost friends or something.

Good evening, sir, he said, polite-like. My name's Lennie, and this here is Sarah.

Lennie and Sarah. Sarah and Lennie. Don't exactly roll off your tongue, does it? And they didn't look any better together than it sounds.

Sarah let her eyes move off the floor for an instant to catch mine, then she took a quick look at the wife, who hadn't looked up from her book, then went back to studying the floor. Normally, I wouldn't think about shaking somebody's hand like that, somebody I don't know, but he kept standing there, this dopey grin on his face, with his hand stuck out, so I took it loosely, and the kid damn near broke my fingers.

You see, sir, Sarah and me is here for this job interview in the morning, he explains as if I give a shit, still pumping my hand, trying to break my fingers. I managed to get free of his grip, but he kept talking.

We came in early so I'd be ready first thing in the morning, but the thing is we spent all our money on the gas to get here, and we've already slept in the car one night, and we just need a good night's sleep before that job thing in the morning. So I was wondering if you could spot us, say, fifty bucks, just fifty bucks, that's all, to help us out. 'Course I'll pay you back, just as soon as I get that job and get my first check.

I don't say anything, and he's still grinning with his free hand on his hip now. What I'm thinking is he's a cheap operator, the kind who can always figure a way to get just enough money for the next whatever but never enough to really make a real life like he ought to.

I figure she's a hanger-on and a whiner.

You know, Aw, gee, Lennie baby, pleeeease? And he gives her whatever it is she wants just to keep her quiet. Right now, she's quiet because she knows the game. He's the operator, and she just needs to stay out of it right now.

So he's asking for $50, and he already knows from the sign on the door that the cheapest room they have is $79.95, so either he had more money than he said, or he hopes to con the clerk—or the next unlucky soul to walk through the door—out of the rest of the dough.

Normally at a time like that, I'd have told him to fuck off and leave us alone. Can't stand cheap operators like that. You know, they're usually smart enough to get a real job and take care of things the right way, but for some reason, they like it the other way. Get by, get over, take what you can. Like other folks owe them something.

Fuck off! that's what I was thinking. But for some reason—so help me, I can't figure out why to this day—what I say is, Job interview? Where is this job interview?

Now I'd gone and done it. The wife jabs me with her elbow—doesn't even look up from her book, but she's right there with what's going on, all right. What I done was engage the little shit. Once you do that, you speak to them or you look them in the eye or you act concerned, and all of a sudden, you're engaged in whatever scam or hard-luck tale they have to offer.

The kid knows it too—picks up on my mistake and kept talking.

Sir, I'm glad you asked 'cause I'm really excited about this opportunity.

I think I yawned then. I was really tired, so it was a real yawn, but I hoped the kid would get the message that I didn't give a crap about his stupid job. He didn't.

You see, sir, there's this restaurant here in town, been here a long time, I think, and they're expanding or something, and I hear they're hiring right now.

He keeps calling me sir like he really respected me or something. He doesn't even know me. Just another mark to get him to the next stage of something or other. But he's a good talker. I'll give him that.

The thing is, I want to be the first guy they talk to, to get the first shot, you know? But I gotta get some rest, be on my toes for tomorrow. So what do you say about the fifty? I'm good for it, believe me, you won't lose your money.

Like I never heard that one before. Like I'd never lost any money trying to help some schlep down on their luck or high on the next big thing. Good for it, hell! The wife shifts in her seat, just enough to remind me she's still there, saying in her polite, low-key way, Blow the fucker off. Let's get out of here. But I didn't listen to her or even to the alarm bell inside my head that was telling me the same thing.

So you don't even have a real interview scheduled. Is that what you're saying? I ask, trying to sound accusing, make him feel stupid. He is still grinning. The weight on his arm is still staring at the floor, and he came right back at me, quick as you please.

No, sir, I don't, but see, I know a guy who knows the owner—Al's his name. Everybody calls him Big Al, the owner, not my friend. Anyway, when I see Big Al in the morning, I'll just mention my friend's name, and I'll be right in the door, no problem.

Jeese! The kid's even dumber than I thought. He thinks they're expanding or something, he hears they might be hiring, and he knows somebody who knows somebody. What an opportunity.

Do you even know the name of the restaurant? I ask, trying to act bored.

Big Al's, he says, around that silly grin.

The restaurant, not the owner, stupid.

No, sir, that's it. Big Al's, the restaurant and the owner. Same name. Ain't that neat. Big Al. Big Al's. Neat.

He's actually laughing now. He seems genuinely excited about the opportunity. I can't believe it. No, I can believe it 'cause the kid's really stupid. What I can't believe is what I did next. But you know, sometimes, you just let things roll on of their own accord despite the alarm bells in your head, despite your wife poking you in the ribs, despite thinking all the time, There'll be hell to pay over this. Sometimes, you just do it, like things are out of your control.

Okay, kid, here's what I'm going to do, I heard myself saying as if I was standing outside my body watching this whole thing unfold. I'm gonna make you a onetime offer with some great big strings attached. Hell no! These strings are ropes I'm gonna use to hang your ass if you screw me over. How's that sound?

His grin fades for only a second, and he ignores Sarah's quick look that says, Let's pass on this one, Lennie baby, pleeease.

What you got in mind, old man? he says. Now he's serious, and we're operating almost like peers in this big conspiracy. Guess he feels he doesn't need the sir any more.

Okay, I say, starting to stand up. I hear the wife's book close a little too sharply behind me. She's right, but sometimes, the autopilot takes over. She knows that too.

Here's the deal, I say, looking him in the eye now for the first time. I'm standing really close to him, and he doesn't